Authors Electric

Welcome to my blog! I make a point of never missing a deadline, of planning every aspect of my busy and successful life and ensuring that I am never caught out by anything. Perhaps that is one of the reasons that I live such a gorgeously inspirational life. People often approach me (once they’ve got past my security – note to self, should I think about firing my bodyguard?) and say, “Ruth, how do you do it? You make it all look so easy.” Then they humbly request an autograph and a selfie. #soblessed #secretofmysuccess   OK. We’ve known each other a while now, so I hope and trust that rather than clicking your tongue in disgust and vowing never to read another word I write, you are chuckling at this ludicrous intro and looking forward to one of my trademark Funny Blogs.   It’s 12.36 on 12 th August. I am very, very busy indeed. I got back from holiday late on Monday evening, turned myself around on Tuesday and then went to Belgium for the day so my son could visit his girl...

  I’m grateful this month to fellow Author Electric, Susan Price. Appalled at the prospect of another electoral opportunity for people to vote for individuals who couldn’t give an eff about them, and policies designed to reinstate our colonial supremacy, I needed a blog topic to lighten the mood. And a fortnight ago, Susan duly obliged in her own blog .   It challenged readers to make sense of a series of overheard conversations or monologues: ·         ‘He won't let me have it, but he can always have his football,’ said one woman with a baby in a pushchair. ·         A man in a pub very publicly ended the relationship with his Jezebel girlfriend. ·         Another man told his mum he didn’t like the cat but acknowledged that it was only ‘doing its job’ and his mum should ‘do what you gotta do’. ·         He used to work in a casin...

Spoken into a mobile phone by a young woman pushing a baby in a pushchair. No idea what the 'it' was that he wouldn't let her have. Or where she got this strange idea that 'he' could stop her from having it, whatever it was. But she let everyone within earshot know about it as she passed. There's the start of a story here.      I love technology. It's technology that allows me to bring you this blog and it's technology that now allows me to overhear the snippets of other people's private lives on a regular basis.      I offer them here as a public service to writers who're looking for something to, perhaps, kick-start a story. I overheard this in a pub. No surprises there. The speaker stood nearby, trying to hide his phone in his jacket and mutter into it, but growing louder and more impassioned as he went on. I may not have all of the conversation word for word but I have the gist - and he really did say, 'You Jezebel....